Chapter 761: Do You Think Professor Xu

The opening ceremony was simple: Guo Zi, Ding Jiahui, and a man named Feng Zexuan cut the ribbon, everyone took group photos, ate cake, and then played a few light games.

The atmosphere was quite nice.

In the end, Ding Jiahui took Song Yao on a tour of the company, while Guo Zi and Xu Qingzhou took the opportunity to gather together, resting in Guo Zi’s office.

“What’s the first project going to be?” Xu Qingzhou asked with a smile. The office wasn’t as big as his own, but it was cozy—even a few dolls sat in the corner, probably arranged by Ding Jiahui.

“A match-three puzzle game, something like Link Link or Candy Crush.”

Guo Zi poured water for Xu Qingzhou; he already had a clear plan for the company’s projects.

Xu Qingzhou didn’t know much about the gaming industry, but he knew those two games: “Isn’t the market for games like Link Link and Candy Crush already saturated?”

Currently, competitive games are still the most popular.

“Right. Mei Hui and I want to do something different. Our idea is to not be completely like traditional games—for example, make the first level easy, then jump straight to extreme difficulty in the second level to trigger the player’s competitive drive.”

Xu Qingzhou’s expression turned slightly peculiar.

Hearing this, Xu Qingzhou suddenly had a faint memory.

Wasn’t this exactly the model of “She Lege Yang”? Emphasizing “challenge” instead of the casual nature of traditional match-three games: Level 1 as a simple tutorial with 100% completion rate, Level 2 with a sudden spike in difficulty and a completion rate under 0.1%, creating a “cliffside challenge.”

Everyone has a gambler’s psychology—or, put bluntly, they’re all masochists—the harder it is, the more they want to play.

Low barrier to entry + high difficulty + ad monetization—it was genuinely popular for a while in his last life.

“That look on your face—do you think it’s not worth pursuing?”

Seeing Xu Qingzhou frown in thought, Guo Zi assumed he didn’t think much of the idea.

Xu Qingzhou smiled: “No, I just think it’s interesting. When it’s ready, send it to us first—we’ll help test it.”

It was clear now that Guo Zi and Ding Jiahui’s current success was no accident—technically, they had no weaknesses; winning the attention of investment banks already proved their strength, and their foresight was flawless.

“Then I won’t refuse. A game tested personally by a Nobel laureate? There’s probably only one like this in the world,” Guo Zi laughed.

Guo Zi felt a bit helpless—he and Ding Jiahui didn’t want to ride on their friends’ fame, but they knew Xu Qingzhou and Song Yao’s presence would inevitably bring other things.

They finally decided to take it in stride.

The identities of these two people meant many things would never be simple.

If they went out for a meal and showed affection, they might trend on social media—friends like them clearly needed to gradually adapt.

The opening ceremony lasted about ninety minutes.

After the opening ceremony, Xu Qingzhou dropped Song Yao off at her company, then drove to the institute himself.

A month had passed since the challenge of the Triple Product Peak; the institute had advanced several sub-project ignition experiments.

Moreover, in early August, they successfully maintained the Lawson ignition threshold for 360 seconds—but for such a small-scale experiment, they didn’t bother publicizing it.

Although the Lawson ignition threshold duration kept extending, to make the technology valuable for demonstration reactors, systematic validation was still needed, culminating in net energy gain from the experiment.

Xu Qingzhou’s current top priority, however, remained the upgrade of the divertor.

At the institute, they were simultaneously testing superconducting magnet fatigue, optimization of negative triangularity, and thermoelectric conversion efficiency, among other things.

“Professor Xu.”

Ren Nan handed Xu Qingzhou a report.

“This is the latest TBR report.”

TBR—the tritium breeding ratio. As previously stated, commercializing controlled nuclear fusion requires achieving tritium fuel self-sufficiency to avoid fuel depletion; otherwise, the fusion reactor would depend on external tritium supply, which is prohibitively expensive and unsustainable.